Category Archives: cabinets

Okay – So I admit, I did take a couple of days off from decluttering this weekend.

I did do a bit of work on day 47 and 48, (guest bath closet and cabinet under sink). I also cleaned out and shredded more papers from a small 2 drawer metal filing cabinet (Day 49). I also found a good home for the filing cabinet, a non-profit that my neighbor Mary works with. Day 50, well, let’s just call that a day of rest.

Anyway, I just didn’t post anything the last few days. Here are the after pictures:

Overall, I am doing pretty good in decluttering the house, and am well on my way to being done with it in 365 days. It is amazing how easy it is to declutter one very small area at a time.

Yes, I did skip a few drawers and cabinets in the Den, I will get back to those this week. I just needed a break from all the papers and shredding. Needed a quick declutter project that made me feel like I was making BIG progress (i.e. small declutter projects…) 🙂

I decided to tackle that spice rack today. It actually is in pretty good shape. Call me obsessive/compulsive, but I keep it in alphabetical order (pretty much); since I cook/bake a lot, I use most of the spices I have a lot as well. That said, I know I have a couple items that I hardly, if ever, use. Those will go.

Before:

After:

Look any different? Yeah, I know… not really. BUT – it is all re-alphabetized, I did get rid of a few old spices and put some spices I bought at the farmers market in bottles from plastic baggies.

Then… since I was on such a productive streak, decided to clean another shelf in the pantry… but quickly realized, if I was going to clean one, I was going to have to clean them all. Why? Well, because so much wasn’t even on the right shelf (yes, baking items have a baking shelf, etc.). I jumped in so fast on this one that I didn’t get a before picture.

After:

I did get rid of some stuff from the pantry. Especially the things that were tucked way in the corners, and not used in so long they had WAY expired! (Yikes!)

5 shelves, and to make matters difficult, the door is narrow, so getting to the stuff on either side on the shelves is, well, a pain in the behind. 🙂

Today’s project – the top shelf.

What is up there? I was surprised (a bit) to realized I had mason jars of potpourri and christmas mulling spices. The potpourri will go to the re-sale shop. The mulling spices will be tossed, jars washed and sent to the re-sale shop as well. Three boxes of my Christmas china that will be re-located to a proper place with the rest of the china. Balsamic vinegar (forgot I had that bottle…) Raspberry wine sauce and chocolate wine sauce; I also have a LARGE bottle of homemade vanilla extract (yes, I make my own – and it is WONDERFUL! – I will never go back to the store-bought stuff). Bottles of rum and brandy (moving to the liquor cabinet), as well as about 10 bottles of wine round out the contents of that shelf.

This is the last major cabinet in the kitchen (other than the pantry – and OH am I NOT looking forward to that cleansing!)

Right side of pots/pans (island) cabinet

I have cleaned the island cabinet in the last 3 – 4 months, so what I really need to decide is whether I am going to pull the “trigger” and get rid of some of the extra pans

Left island cabinet (missing 2 pots I used for dinner tonight)

((((sigh))))

Last summer I started using my iron skillets instead of my non-stick pans… While it took a little while to get the iron skillets nice and “seasoned”, now that they are, I LOVE using them! Even though I have a glass cooktop and had heard that you shouldn’t use iron skillets on such a cooktop (because if you drop them, well your cooktop is history…) I still do – I am careful with the cooktop so I don’t scratch it as well.

Much better! got rid of a veggie grilling pan that I never liked very much and a plastic top to a disposable foil roasting pan that I used and already threw in the trash. 🙂

I didn’t take another picture of the pots/pans side of the island, the pots i used tonight are still in the dishwasher. I did decide to cull 3 of my pans; so I am down from 8 to 5.

We do not live in the same town, so I wasn’t able to see her. in fact, I haven’t met her yet, though I was really hoping to have done so a long time ago. But I digress.

So… today I tackled the top of the refrigerator. Who else out there uses that spot as extra storage space??

I also have a double cabinet above the fridge that was holding these

Now, of course, since the top of the fridge looked like this…

Would you move all that stuff to get to those cabinets up there? Me either…

I pretty much “never” got into the cabinets up there to use any of those vases… 14 of them in total… I will keep a couple of them, but I would say 11 – 12 of them on their way to the re-sale shop. No, I’m not posting them on ebay, they are too big, and since they are glass would have to be packed up very well to ship to an ebay buyer – the cost of the shipping would far exceed the value of these lovely items. So straight to the donation center they go.

I also culled several books from the “book basket” (more on my cookbooks in a few days…) and straightened that thing up as well. While it will go back on top of the fridge, I actually do use the cookbooks from up there.

As an avid cook and baker, I tend to accumulate small kitchen appliances. In particular, I seem to have a fetish for mixers. I have two different Braun mixers, a cuisinart hand held mixer, my kitchenade standing mixer, my grandmother’s sunbeam standing mixer (one of the original ones that was made – it’s Model #7!). Will I be purging any of these? Well… not yet. 🙂 Believe it or not, I actually use all of them, each one seems to be better for different tasks, though I do rely on my kitchenade the most. As for my grandmother’s Sunbeam, it still works!

Grandma Helen’s Sunbeam mixer

I had several large canning jars in there – serveral little jam jars (think repurpose bug). All those are gone.

I also had two cookie presses; one I will keep, the other is going to take a spin on ebay and then off to the resale shop if it doesn’t sell. I also had a Wilton cake decorating gun… never did use that thing…

After

In an earlier post I mentioned the cookie cutters that were in a drawer. They are now in their proper place, with the other cookie cutters.

The jar was my grandmother’s, and my mom used it to hold cookie cutters when she inherited it. Family traditions, passed down through the generations…